Not Dead Yet

The Volokh Conspiracy links to this opinion by Judge Boyce Martin of the Sixth Circuit, where she declares:

Because collateral estoppel precludes future litigation of one specific issue, and because that is what the state effectively asks us to find, we construe their argument as one for collateral estoppel rather than res judicata, despite the substitution of one term for the other in the state’s brief.

Noting in a footnote: “Because Latin is a dead language anyway.”

But wait! Judge Alice Batchelder rides to the rescue! In her concurring opinion, she writes:

I concur in Judge Martin’s opinion.
I write separately only to express my suspicion that, like the reports of Mark Twain’s death, see The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (Third Edition, 2002), the report of the death of Latin in the majority opinion’s footnote 5 is greatly exaggerated.

Hooray for Judge Batchelder! Lingua latina per aeternam!